Life Lessons In Video Games

I'm playing Fable II this week, borrowed it from the library, and I got to the technical end of the storyline, though to actually finish the games, there are still a lot of challenges and quests to complete.

So I'm standing in the Spire, and I have to make a wish. I get three choices, Selfless, Love, or Money.

Well, Money is out. By this time in the game I'm carting around three and a half million gold and earning twenty thou every five minutes. So it's between Selfless and Love.

Selfless resurrects everybody who was sacrificed to build this monstrosity of a construction, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. But it doesn't save anybody I loved who died to keep me alive--not my sister, not my dog. Love does the reverse, brings back the people who died to keep me alive, but not the innocent lives.

I chose Love first, got the Xbox Acheivement, and then started listening to the comments Hannah was making about me, and I didn't like them. I rebooted the device, and low and behold, the game had saved just minutes before I made the choice, but I still had the acheivement. I chose Money, just long enough to get the acheivement for that particular ending, but didn't bother to listen to any comments.

I restarted the system again. Selfless.

Hannah started snipping at me again. But I kept playing, past when the game saved again, and I was trapped in my decision. But then I started thinking.

What good is a life without anyone you love in it? So what if I saved the world, so what if I saved all those lives? I don't really care about the appreciation of strangers.

Who do I have now, aside from relatives I don't spend a lot of time with, and for the most part, really don't care for? Who do I have?

No one.